NEWS - DOMINIQUE GYSELINCK, director of operations of the largest network

The Dominique London group that she directs with her husband Frédéric Dechamps brings together more than twenty civets across the Old Continent.

The story begins in Laethem-Saint-Martin, a chic suburb of Ghent. Dominique Gyselinck, fifty-two years old today, ran his boutique Plumes et Cigares there which, as its name suggests, is devoted to luxury pens and cigars. A universe that she
discovered it while visiting a store in Uccle, an upscale suburb of Brussels, also run by a woman, Monique, who introduced him to puros, by offering him to smoke a Hoyo de Monterrey Epicure N° 2.
Conquered, she opened, six months later, her own brand Plumos et Cigares. In the meantime, she opened her first cigar store in Knokke-Heist, a fashionable seaside resort on the North Sea. she will have met her husband, Frédéric Dechamps, forty-four years old
Today.
In 2009, Dominique was approached by Cubacigar Benelux to transform its Knokke store into a La Casa del franchise.
Habano, From there, everything goes very quickly, Between 2011 and 2016. four other Casa del Habano open their doors in Ghent, in Hasselt, then. in Bruges. That of Courtrai closes the ban, the year when Dominique won, during the XVIIIth Festival del Habano, the “Hombre Habano” prize, in the Commerce category, “It was with the strength of the wrist that I managed to win as a woman in the world of cigars, which has always been dominated by men. On the way to the podium where I was to take possession of my statuette in Havana, I saw amazement in the eyes of many men – and even a touch of jealousy,” she told L’Amateur de Cigare.

The big turning point came two years later. The couple and their Casa del Tabaco group bought the British C.Gars managed by Mitchell Orchant, leader on the premium cigar market across the Channel with an online store (Internet sales are authorized in England) and nine stores including the ficuron is located on Saint James’s Street, the historic street of cigar shops in London, where Davidoft, James J. Fox and, at the time, Dunhill are located. A distillery is also in the bride and groom’s basket.
Acquisitions of new franchises
At the time of the merger, the Dominique London group then had two online stores and seventeen establishments (eight in Belgium and nine in the United Kingdom). The Gyselinck couple and the Orchant family, founders of C.Gars, share 65% of the capital, the other shares being held by external investors.
Since this marriage, both parties have always thought bigger.
Dominique London began looking for acquisitions, new Casa del Habano franchises in particular, such as that of Basel in
Switzerland which has been expanded or that of Tenerife in the Costa Adeje resort recently joined by La Casa del Habano Gran Canaria installed in Las Palmas.
In total, Dominique London now has 26 stores across Europe, in Belgium, the United Kingdom, Switzerland and Spain. Which makes it, by far, the largest network of cigar shops in the Old Continent.